LEXINGTON — Craig Rust left Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course four hours after the end of Saturday’s inaugural NASCAR Nationwide Children’s Hospital 200. About 20 minutes after walking through the door at home, he crashed.

“All the adrenaline and excitement and everything we’ve been living for the month of August, you kind of just go, ‘Ahhhhh,’” the track president said. “And I was out.”

But Monday he was back at his desk in the track’s Dublin office, business as usual. Before talking to a reporter on the phone, he was going over a couple of sales packages his team is working on and brushing up for meetings later in the week with potential new partners.

“You don’t stop,” he said.

The 2013 season ended on a high note last weekend with the first-ever NASCAR-sanctioned event at the 52-year-old permanent road course, drawing crowds reminiscent of when CART was at its zenith in the 1990s and when IndyCar debuted in 2007.

And while the first NASCAR Nationwide Series race was a critical and box office success, it wasn’t perfect.

“With any first-time event and an event of this size, you’re going to learn some things as you go through it. Nothing specific to point out, but we’ve got some things already identified for 2014 that we want to make improvements on from a service standpoint and we’ll get on those,” Rust said.

Mid-Ohio was prepared for an onslaught that never really materialized. Traffic heading into the track and parking inside it was steady and smooth for a crowd of its size. There were few problems getting fans out of Mid-Ohio as campers and race haulers heeded the call to stay put until later in the evening or the next day.

Rust gave credit to the sheriff departments of Richland and Morrow counties, the village of Lexington, the state patrol and the Ohio Department of Transportation, as well as his volunteers and paid staff for making it happen.

Initial feedback from NASCAR officials was nothing but positive.

“They even made comments about the Friday crowd which was a nice crowd,” Rust said. “On these stand-alone events, they’ve gone to places on Friday and other than the garage area, no one is there. I think they were pleased with the support that the event received from the fans and the sponsors and Nationwide and Nationwide Children’s Hospital.”

As for the extras around the event, Rust said it was collaborative between the track, NASCAR, Nationwide Insurance and the hospital. Things like bringing out patients of the hospital to the track, having one of them — Bellville’s Grant Reed — serve as Grand Marshal, inviting the Ohio State Marching Band and Brutus Buckeye to be part of the show, getting the Columbus Children’s Choir to sing the national anthem and putting patient likenesses or names on more than a dozen cars were all special touches that made the race seem more important.

“I thought pre-race was as good a pre-race as any I’ve been involved with. With the band and the kids and the drivers coming out and supporting the inaugural event, that’s what you need, people working with one another leading into these things and being creative and working hard,” Rust said.

The race itself offered a season’s worth of action in the course of 94 laps, taking less than three hours to complete, meaning there was very little lag time.

“I’m not surprised at all,” Rust said of the quality of the race that saw seven cautions for 18 laps and two stints of more than 20 green-flag-laps, plus eight lead changes and plenty of passes throughout the field.

It was a success for the track, proving it could handle the most popular sanctioning body in American racing. Nevertheless, Rust spent Monday morning going through all the notes he wrote himself throughout the weekend on things he saw going right and those that need more attention.

“You’ve got to make sure you capture everything while it’s fresh in your mind,” he said.

After rummaging through his notes and before calling a reporter, he started writing thank-you notes.

“People have no idea the number of people you rely on to help make this event successful,” Rust said. “You want to make sure you acknowledge the folks and the staff.”

Hosting two events for IndyCar and NASCAR in a three-week span was trying for Mid-Ohio.

“The team here worked their butts off, so I want to make sure they know that I know how hard they worked and some of the sacrifices they made over the past several weeks for these events,” he said.

A time will come over the next several weeks when they’ll get together to discuss all the things in Rust’s notebook. But Monday wasn’t the day.

Rust had other things on his to-do list, just two days after a history-making event.